


the long road

by picklebridge



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Blue Shadow Virus (Star Wars), Brotherly Love, Gen, Matter of Life and Death, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29298405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picklebridge/pseuds/picklebridge
Summary: All clones know that there’s an end to the road, and that for most of them, it’s a speedrun there. They all secretly have the way that they would like to go, have prepared for the flashbang that will come the day they’re just too slow. None of them were bred for this slow wasting, this hollowing goodnight.-'53 is one of the clones Captain Rex brings into the bunker to stop the Blue Shadow virus. As its effects take hold, his thoughts fill the silence.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Original Clone Trooper Character(s), Original Clone Trooper Character(s) & Original Clone Trooper Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	the long road

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone atually reads this...hello, I'm delighted to have you here! i love '53 and Exi very much, they're my first fleshed out clone ocs.

It’s nothing really. Just a little scrap of metal, pinched and folded and hung on a string. ‘53 doesn’t remember which world it came from, or which campaign led to his brother fishing a scrap of shrapnel from the rubble and saving it for later. He thinks it came from one of the gunships, once. Seems most likely by the little patches of finish still left, the little rub of bright paint that might be a fragment of nose art. That was probably why Exi picked it; he’s always like a vulture in the clean-up, picking through the debris for the odds and ends they can’t salvage. Says he likes pretty things.

They always told him he’d get in trouble back on Kamino, where Exi couldn’t keep his hands to himself either. They’d turn their back for half a second and he’d have vanished, snooping and getting into things he shouldn’t, or sneaking off to hide in the trash compactor room. He’d say he liked the white noise of the incinerator as it hummed, that it drowned out the awful silence of the sterile halls.

‘53’d never understood that about his brother…but he does now. The quiet of the bunker seeps in, every breath a new poisoning. He is used to looking around him and seeing blue, but not like this. Not as a hazy mirage on a dying breeze. He never knew that air could be something you fought against, that you tried to _escape._ Never knew that it could taste heavy on your tongue. Every now and then there’s a cough, a murmur of broken conversation. Usually between the Commander and the Captain, or the Senator as they try to swap comfort. It trails away quickly. Even Representative Binks is mostly silent now, wound down by the long hours and the way each breath seems to fight you.

Each inhale comes short and his mouth tastes like fear. ’53 reaches to his neck and clasps his hands round that little shard on its makeshift chain, rolling the shrapnel in his palm. It’s not the first one he’s ever been given, but he rather suspects it’s the last. He hopes the other members of Torrent will be decent, in the after, will accept the little trinkets slipped under their pillows and ignore the frenetic sounds of Exi working late at night the way he does when things have gone bad. They’re not so tolerant usually, not the way ‘53 is because he grew up with it, seeing little collections of glass sherds and spent blaster rounds and frayed shoulder patches of old cadet uniforms piled in the bottom of Exi’s bunk. The noise is second nature, and he wishes for it now.

All clones know that there’s an end to the road, and that for most of them, it’s a speedrun there. They all secretly have the way that they would like to go, have prepared for the flashbang that will come the day they’re just too slow. None of them were bred for this slow wasting, this hollowing goodnight.

He breathes in, and another cough rattles through his lungs, punching deep. He feels more than sees the Captain move over, then blinks and squints up at Rex’s haggard face as a gauntleted hand presses against his back.

“Come on ’53, hang in there,” he rasps, and ’53 sees it, sees the way the blue has threaded into his skin and stained his mouth, wondering if the same has happened to him.

He doesn’t waste the O2 on mentioning it. Instead, he just nods, lets the Captain slump against his shoulder and continues worrying the fragment against his fingers.

He’s never managed to find a name that felt right, or done anything interesting enough to be gifted one by his brothers. His paint is standard 501st, and the soles of his boots are still so new they haven’t creased. Not a shiny, but not anything else either.

And yet, still, he has this. A little square of silver, and the knowledge that behind it, there is a brother who will remember him.


End file.
